A Class Divided | FRONTLINE - PBS Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliotts workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, shed have to attend. (PDF) A Class Divided - ResearchGate Blue or Brown; A Classroom Divided | Applied Social Psychology (ASP) "We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. In the 60s, the United States was in the midst of a social race crisis. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. The results showed a . ISBN 9780520382268. The next day, Jane made it known to the students that she had made a mistake and that the brown-eyed pupils were better and smarter than their counterparts. The May 25 killing of George Floyd set off weeks of nationwide protests over the police abuse and racism against black people, plunging the U.S. into a reckoning of racial inequality. "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. She told the kids that blue-eyed children weren't as good as brown-eyed or green-eyed ones. Elliott? After the local newspaper published a story on Elliott and the experiment, she was flown to New York to appear on May 31, 1968, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where she extolled the experiments effectiveness in cluing in her 8-year-old white students on what it was like to be Black in America. The idea was simple but profound. The experiment known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. Jane Elliot's Famous Classroom Experiment: How Eye Color - Thriveworks In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. In Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Things, educational psychologist Michele Borda says it "teaches our children to counter stereotypes before they become full-fledged, lasting prejudices and to recognize that every human being has the right to be treated with respect." Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. She knew that the children weren't going to buy her pitch unless she came up with a reason, and the more scientific to these Space Age children of the 1960s, the better. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. Dick DeMarsico/New York World-Telegram & the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/PhotoQuest/Getty Images, Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. The video . She would conduct the exercise for the nine more years she taught the third grade, and the next eight years she taught seventh and eighth graders before giving up teaching in Riceville, in 1985, largely to conduct the eye-color exercise for groups outside the school. The fourth of five children, Elliott was born on her family's farm in Riceville in 1933, and was delivered by her Irish-American father himself. Mary and Zeke have three children, all of whom have blue eyes. More than 50 years after she first tried that exercise in her classroom, Elliott, now 87, said she sees much more work left to do to change racist attitudes. "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. In the 60th year beyond Brown vs. Board of Education, Frontline is making available their classic 1985 documentary, " A Class Divided ," about the experiment and what happened later. In this 1998 photograph, former Iowa teacher Jane Elliott, center, speaks with two Augsburg University . (2013). She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. "People of other color groups seem to understand," she said. When Sarah, the Elliotts' oldest daughter, went to the girls' bathroom in junior high, she came out of a stall to see a message scrawled in red lipstick on the mirror: "Nigger lover.". I felt mad. On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. You didnt understand the directions. Keep me from judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins. This is a Sioux saying. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. It brings up immediate anger and hatred. American Psychological Association, 4. More than 50 years after her famous exercise, Elliott is still fighting. Blue Eyed versus Brown Eyed Students Jane Elliott was not a psychologist, but she developed one of the most famously controversial exercises in 1968 by dividing students into a blue-eyed group and . The nearest traffic light is 20 miles away. "The racists carry on, so I carry on." The lives and legacies of Dr. Jane Elliott and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are inextricably linked. Grey eyes are also a rare eye color. "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. It also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . You can start from that point in Activity 2, or you can play the video from the beginning (00:00) so that your students can see civil rights era footage following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Elliott's students returning to Iowa . Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. "She taught in this school for 18 years." The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring . How can put those little children through that exercise for a day? And they seem unable to relate the sympathy that theyre feeling for these little white children for a day to what happens to children of color in this society for a lifetime or to the fact that they are doing this to children based on skin color every day. 5/21/2020 Topic: Module 2 Discussion: 10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today - Mental Floss Two Important Psychological Experiments: The Blue Eye/Brown Eye and . "Malinda? Then tell them that . She then made the blue-eyed students believe that they were better and smarter than their counterparts. She also assumed that none of the children had interacted with black people and that the only place they could have seen them is on television. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968, Jane Elliott, a schoolteacher in rural Iowa, introduced to her all-white third-grade class a shocking experiment to demonstrate . It was the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 that Elliott ran her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise in her Riceville, Iowa classroom. . "We'll just be a couple of minutes. A Review of Jane Elliott's Experiment In, a Class Divided Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. Why do researchers use correlational studies? "Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical," Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. On the second day, the roles were reversed, and those with brown eyes received special treatment, and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior (A Class, 2003). Some residents were furious. "That you, Ms. Elliott asked. "It's the same thing over and over again," Cross says. Looking back, I think part of the problem was that, like the residents of other small midwestern towns I've covered, many in Riceville felt that calling attention to oneself was poor manners, and that Elliott had shone a bright light not just on herself but on Riceville; people all over the United States would think Riceville was full of bigots. . . The Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Experiment: Investigation. Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? It is quite powerful to watch. Privacy Statement Thus, the dominant group, supported by the authorities, will always have the upper hand. Additionally, the brown-eyed students got to sit in the front of the class, while the blue-eyed kids . The empathy she works to inspire in students with the experiment, which has been modified over the years, is necessary, she said. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. It occurs to me that for a teacher, the arrival of new students at the start of each school year has a lot in common with the return of crops each summer. Its not true and its not fair no matter what you say! he responded. The roots of racism and why it continues unabated in America and other nations are complicated and gnarled. A smart blue-eyed girl who had never had problems with multiplication tables started making mistakes. She and Darald split their time between a converted schoolhouse in Osage, Iowa, a town 18 miles from Riceville, and a home near Riverside, California. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy theywere. According to role theorist Erving Goffman, emotional and cognitive experiences in such experiments as the Blue-Eyed versus the Brown-Eyed can have a long-term influence on behaviors and attitudes of participants especially when they are made to play the role of a stigmatized group (Biddle, 2013). Brown Eyes or Blue: A Social Experiment - Soapboxie Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. In Jane Elliott's experiment she made the third graders believe that the blue eyed people were better,than the brown eyed people. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. ", For years scholars have evaluated Elliott's exercise, seeking to determine if it reduces racial prejudice in participants or poses a psychological risk to them. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". "Brown eyes and Blue eyes" Study | sabbaila Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. Many of them noted that when they hear prejudice and discrimination from others, they wish they could whip out those collars and give them the experience they had as third graders. Kors writes that Elliott's exercise taught "blood-guilt and self-contempt to whites," adding that "in her view, nothing has changed in America since the collapse of Reconstruction." "You have to put the exercise in the context of the rest of the year. Scores of others did participate. One group consisted pupils with brown eye while the other group consisted of those with blue eyes. The children said yes, and the exercise began. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. We Are Repeating The Discrimination Experiment Every Day, Says - NPR Jane Elliott's brown eye/blue eye experiment starts at 03:10 of A Class Divided. This technique allows researchers to show how many different traits are necessary to create defined groups, and then analyze the subjects behavior within their groups. This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. Blue Eye/Brown Eye is an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated to demonstrate what prejudice was to her third grade class. One of the ways Hitler decided who went into the gas chamber was eye color, Elliott said in a later speech. The first day of the experiment she convinced the children that blue-eyed people were smarter, better and would have more priorities. Once indoors, the brown-eyed group was then treated to coffee and doughnuts, while the blue-eyed group could only stand around and wait. You can contribute to that positive change by watching the documentary. Retrieved from https://speedypaper.com/essays/ethical-concerns-in-jane-elliots-experiment, Free essays can be submitted by anyone, so we do not vouch for their quality. You must get the parents first. The students were surprised, but they didnt argue. ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. She was 10 before the farmhouse had running water and electricity. The Hangout Bar & Grill, the Riceville Pharmacy and ATouch of Dutch, a restaurant owned by Mennonites, line Main Street. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise ." As a school teacher in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, Elliott first conducted the anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade classroom, the day after the civil rights leader was killed. Your Privacy Rights Provide your email for sample delivery, You agree to receive our emails and consent to our Terms & Conditions, Order an essay on this subject and get a 100% original paper. Today, she says, it's still playing out as the U.S. reckons with racial injustice. Zimbardocreator of the also controversial 1971 Stanford Prisoner Experiment, which was stopped after college student volunteers acting as "guards" humiliated students acting as "prisoners"says Elliott's exercise is "more compelling than many done by professional psychologists.
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